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Going beyond text messaging!

With the rapid growth of messaging applications over the last couple of years, text messaging has become ubiquitous and the preferred form of communication by users. Text messaging is great as it gives users the freedom to express freely without any restrictions. However, as users continue to use messaging for more complex forms of communication, they find the whole experience very limiting as these applications are only text based.

Most businesses, services and devices expect messages in a certain format/structure in order to service a request. These entities rely on structured data to move the user experience forward. For example, when ordering food from a restaurant, the user needs to provide the item name/number and quantity in order for the restaurant to confirm the order and give a time estimate. Subsequently, the user can make changes to the order. Text messaging is limiting in these scenarios as it is verbose, does not carry forward the current context and makes it hard to enforce rules.

Even when communicating with friends and family, there are scenarios where plain text is not the best form of communication. For example, it is difficult to poll a group of friends, share a task list, order food from a restaurant, talk to a customer service rep, communicate with a network connected public printer to print a document etc using text messages.

Problems with current messaging apps:

Current Messaging platforms are primarily text driven and lack structure. Text only format limits what you can communicate and with whom. It can’t,

Facilitate complex interactions

Interact with Systems and Devices which expect structured messages

Carry context across conversations. Complex conversations require a series of steps with multiple decision points. It is hard for a system to make a decision based on the current message without understanding the conversational context.

Messaging is verbose due to which it is hard to understand and respond quickly

To address these problems and take messaging to the next level we created Wigmee. Wigmee is a structured messaging platform that aims to assist people by giving them the headspace to think less and act more in an efficient manner. Wigmee facilitates complex interactions such as sharing a task list, creating a poll, sending an invite, seeking opinion from friends and family and much more.

In addition to providing the benefits of structure such as productivity, Wigmee gives users freedom of expression via text messaging within structured interactions the way they used to currently.

For example consider the following conversation using a traditional messaging application.

As you can see, the above conversations has multiple problems:

Hard to Follow : Adding, updating and deleting items via text makes it hard to figure out the most up to date state of the list

Multiple conversations such as grocery list, party planning etc are intertwined with one another

No Feedback : As the list is being worked on, there is no easy for the user to know what’s completed and pending

Verbose : There is a whole lot of typing going on

Now consider the same interaction using Wigmee. Wigmee assists you during chat so that you are able to construct a structured list from within the chat context. You can type in text the way you used to in traditional messaging apps, we take care of nicely formatting the text into a structured list which you can review and send. Check out the screenshots below to see how this works using Wigmee.

Adding, updating and deleting of tasks can all be done within the context of the structured list. Users can convey their intent simply by selecting a checkbox. Also, users can clearly see done as well as pending tasks. In addition, users have the flexibility to communicate via plain text where structured context is not optimal.

WigMee also supports other structured interactions such as polling a group of friends to decide on which movie to go to, creating a reminder (and syncing it with your phone calendar) when your wife ask you to pick up kids on the way back from work and seeking opinion of friends on the dress you are thinking of purchasing at the mall. Wigmee also allows users to discover and share content from external services like youtube, giphy, news articles, amazon items etc.

Wigmee also presents you summarized conversations in your app home screen. This helps you to keep your conversations organized by topics rather than having multiple streams of conversations intertwined with one another.

We are aggressively working on integration with SMS, email and web. This will allow Wigmee users to share structured interactions with contacts no matter what platform they are on.

Our goal is to open up Wigmee so that any developer can easily create custom widgets that run within the messaging application or in a browser. Developers will be able to create custom screens, configure complex workflows, business rules and easily deploy them to the users. We want to tap into the vast development community and enable creation of the widgets that can connect with any service or device or enhance people to people communication. Reach out to us if you are a developer with a cool idea that you want to see live on Wigmee.

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Wigmee is available for free as a iOS and Android app.

We want to re-imagine what a messaging can be and take it to the next level. We are very excited to interact with all of you and hear what use-cases you have in mind and answer any questions you may have! Please drop us a line at hello@wigmee.com/@WigmeeAct/fb. Also check out our website www.wigmee.com.